William George Bunter (Billy Bunter) was a schoolboy who attended the fictional Greyfriars boarding school, invented by the writer Charles Hamilton, writing under the pen name Frank Richards from 1908.
Bunter was obese, greedy, lazy and dishonest. The perfect anti-hero. Millions of children delighted in his exploits which were serialised in the now defunct ‘Magnet’, and later became books in their own right.
Bunter’s big round spectacles and rolling gait earned him the nickname the “Owl of the Remove”, and he would go to extreme lengths to avoid school work and to purloin food.
Bunter’s schoolmates continually poke fun at the ‘Fat Owl’ and whilst he is always the butt of their jokes, he retains a perverse innocence and self-belief.
Always the very last to take to the rugger field or the cricket pitch at Greyfriars, Bunter loves to demonstrate his sporting finesse as an adult. Former pupils marvel to this day at Bunter’s inventive wiles to avoid physical activity of any kind.
A recurring theme is that Bunter suffers a perennial shortage of cash and is forever attempting to borrow money from his schoolfellows, explaining that he is expecting a postal order from one of his “titled relations”.
Naturally, Bunter has every intention of paying back the money he has borrowed, but those debts haunt him throughout his time at Greyfriars.
